The present disclosure relates generally to an innovative investment program, which is designed to improve investment performance for investors, including participants in Benefit Plans, by automatically determining appropriate savings levels and automatically allocating, rebalancing and reallocating investment assets (which generally include taxable and tax-deferred assets, and may include assets in Benefit Plans, once an investor so directs or in cases where a third party can direct on behalf of the investor, without receiving direction from the investor) for investors, while eliminating or, at least, ameliorating the conflict of interest that would otherwise exist between a provider of automatic allocation services and persons (e.g., money managers, registered investment advisors, etc.) that would normally benefit from such automatic services. The innovative investment program includes, but is not limited to, systems and methods that are computer housed software programs for collecting, monitoring, and directing data from persons, who hold investors' indicative data, including, but not limited to, sponsors of pension plans, money managers, and affiliates of such persons.
The field of individual savings, including retirement savings, has been greatly impacted by the vigorous growth of the stock market and retirement plans that offer individual accounts. Both of these recent phenomena generally require the individual investor to both determine how much to save and how to invest savings, including directing the investment of the assets allocated in his or her individual savings account or similar account. Considering the continuing erosion of traditional Benefit Plan pension plans (which are managed on behalf of individuals and, in this regard, require no action from such individuals), the approaching retirement of the baby-boom generation, and the growing interest in Social Security reform, effective savings, including the effective use of the Benefit Plan, as defined hereinafter, is a cornerstone of an effective retirement policy for the United States of America, or any other country facing the above challenges, and is believed will have a staggering impact on future national and state policy as well as future national and state budget allocation decisions.
In the case of Employee Benefit Plans (“Benefit Plans” are arrangements, including trusts or other vehicles associated with such arrangements, which hold assets generally designed to be saved until after termination of employment, including, but not limited to, employer-sponsored 401(k) plans, and individual retirement plans and annuities and other similar plans), Benefit Plan sponsors and public policy officials have been very concerned about the effective “utilization” of Benefit Plans and the implications thereof with respect to the future of at least Social Security for some time. Investments in employee education, expanded investment choices, lifestyle funds, retirement planning software, online advice tools, etc. have all been produced with the goal of improving the overall national savings rates, including Benefit Plan utilization (i.e., raising participation rates, generally increasing salary deferral levels and establishing/maintaining appropriate asset allocation).
Unfortunately, the above-described methods are yet to achieve the desired results. Despite investments in the above described methods, most individuals, including many participants in self-directed, individual account plans, do not even participate, and when most individuals do participate, most individuals do not appropriately save and invest, including a failure to participate in 401(k) plans, nor do they save sufficient amounts, as reported in O. S. Mitchell, J. F. Moore, 1998, “Can Americans Afford to Retire? New Evidence on Retirement Saving Adequacy,” Journal of Risk & Insurance 65(3), 371-400, and/or most individuals do not appropriately allocate their assets, including assets in their retirement accounts, to adequately provide for their future retirement income needs.
As is known, individual investors as opposed to institutional investor populations can roughly be divided into two groups as follows:
Financially “Involved”:
The “financially involved,” as defined in the present application, are believed to already be doing better than the average Benefit Plan participant but are generally not yet saving or allocating their saving in an optimal manner. The financially involved presently save in greater (and generally more appropriate) amounts and are believed to generally appreciate additional tools and information and would apparently benefit from these and additional services, though not as to the same extent as the financially uninvolved apparently would benefit.
Financially “Uninvolved”:
The “financially uninvolved,” as defined in the present application are believed responsible for the bulk of the investment shortcoming problem, as the participation of the financially uninvolved in employer sponsored pension or savings vehicles, (including Benefit Plans savings) and asset allocation behavior is inconsistent with that which would be implemented by a qualified financial professional. The financially uninvolved do not appreciate tools and information and appear to simply want to be handed a solution for retirement investing with the least amount of their personal involvement as possible.
Drastically improving the resulting problems described above (including under utilization of employer sponsored Benefit Plans) requires meeting the needs of the “financially uninvolved,” which typically represents well over sixty percent (60%) of the employee population. Recent studies indicate that, in the case of section 401(k) Employee Benefit Plans, the financially uninvolved group's 401(k) participation, and investment decisions vary tremendously with the way that the 401(k) participation and investment options are presented to the plan participants. The findings from these studies strongly suggest that current 401(k) Employee Benefit Plans are not optimally designed to meet the needs of the “financially uninvolved” segment of Employee Benefit Plan eligible employees.
Specifically, it is presently believed that the problems described above for both the financially involved and the financially uninvolved result from the fact that currently, individuals are either: 1) too involved in the process of selecting investments and frequently do so by choosing investments based on the recent performance of individual investment vehicles; 2) do not save appropriate amounts to meet their goals, including retirement; or 3) more often, they feel they do not have the time, interest, and/or expertise to make appropriate investments or structure appropriate savings plans.
The above described individual-investor behavior is in contrast to institutional investors, who recognize the importance of appropriately funding for future liabilities, and then determine an appropriate funding policy and asset allocation model to best fund future liabilities, and only then select investment vehicles based on the ability to implement the model allocation-thus recognizing that money management (e.g., security selection) is of secondary importance for passive, long-term investors.
The process described above as used by individuals typically results in inadequate funding levels (low savings rates) and inappropriate investment including suboptimal allocations. Specifically, it is presently believed that the problems described above for both the financially involved and the financially uninvolved result from the fact that, currently, the process of carrying out the necessary steps to appropriately save, as outlined above, is still too overwhelming for even the financially involved, much less the financially uninvolved.
It is presently believed that one of the possible reasons for the inadequate savings situations, as describe above, is that saving for the future is typically something that is put off until tomorrow, especially by financially uninvolved investors and especially, by individual Benefit Plan participants in the absence of effective investment assistance. In the case of Employee Benefit Plans lack of participation by eligible employees, it has been and is presently a persistent problem that Benefit Plan sponsors face with the implementation of Benefit Plans. Benefit Plan sponsors are all too familiar with employees who always intend to enroll in the Benefit Plan, but somehow never quite get around to submitting the authorization that will enable the Benefit Plan sponsor to deduct the contributions (savings) from the employees pay on a regular basis. Various academic studies and consulting reports indicate that somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of 401(k)-eligible employees do not participate in their company-sponsored 401(k) Benefit Plan. (See, for example, Poterba, Vent, and Wise (1994), Andrews (1992), and Bassett, Fleming and Rodrigues (1998) for academic studies and Fidelity Investments (1999) for a consulting report).
One of the main reasons given by individual investors for nonparticipation in Benefit Plans for which they are eligible is that the process of optimally making a decision to start any savings plan, including participation in a 401(k) plan is complicated, as viewed by the average potential Benefit Plan participant or eligible participant. Studies by psychologists have shown that increasing the complexity of a decision-making task leads individuals to defer making a decision or to procrastinate and such appears to be prevalent among the average potential Benefit Plan participants.
It is presently believed that there are at least two sources of complexity in starting any savings program, such as, for example, Benefit Plans, including making the initial decision to “opt in” as a plan participant and then making an optimal 401(k) Benefit Plan investment allocation decision. First, the shear number of possible investment allocation options to be evaluated by individual investors is enormous. Each individual investor must first choose what fraction of their compensation or other income to contribute (savings) to the Benefit Plan. With respect to 401(k) Benefit Plans, generally a range of from one percent (1%) to fifteen percent (15%) of an employee's compensation is offered as possible options. Each individual investor must then choose how to allocate their contribution (savings). In the case of 401(k) Benefit Plans, there are between, on average, ten or more investment options that are available. Outside a 401(k) Benefit Plan, the investment allocation options are, as a practical matter, unlimited. Even in most 401(k) Benefit Plans there are, quite literally, an infinite number of investment allocation combinations available.
For the “financially uninvolved” employees, a second source of complexity is learning how to evaluate the myriad of 401(k) Benefit Plan investment allocation options that are available. For example, despite significant investments in employee education, studies show year after year that more than fifty percent (50%) of employees do not even know what a “money market fund” is, much less have the knowledge to intelligently choose from among the myriad of 401(k) Benefit Plan investment allocation options that are available.
Thus, individual investors may rationally postpone making a decision on savings, including 401(k) Benefit Plan participation, most likely because the cost in time and effort of gathering the information necessary to make an intelligent choice from among the myriad of 401(k) Benefit Plan investment allocation options that are available may exceed the short-term benefit of making such a decision, as viewed by large numbers of individual investors.
Recently, some Benefit Plan sponsors have reversed the above described retirement savings procrastination simply by using automatic enrollment in 401(k) Benefit Plans. Under automatic enrollment, individual employees who do not actively request to be excluded from a Benefit Plan are enrolled and a default contribution deferral amount (savings) is automatically deducted from their paycheck (usually 3% of pay) and contributed (saved) to their 401(k) Benefit Plan. The default deferral amount is invested in a default investment vehicle, usually something conservative, such as, for example, a money market, or other relatively stable value fund. Individual employees who do not wish to participate in the available 401(k) Benefit Plan must actively submit their election to “opt-out” (rather than to “opt-in”) the company sponsored Benefit Plan.
Results to date of such an automatic enrollment policy show that automatic enrollment appears to be a “win-lose” approach to changing 401(k) Benefit Plan savings behavior with the “win” aspect being that automatic enrollment has dramatically increases participation. For example, using automatic enrollment, McDonald's has managed to achieve a ninety five percent (95%) enrollment, an astonishing number for a largely unskilled workforce. Participation in the 401(k) plan at J.C. Penney Co. jumped to eighty nine percent (89%) of its 257,000 employees, from the low seventy percent (low 70%), a year after the retailer launched its automatic enrollment participation policy. Additionally, Hewlett-Packard increased the enrollment of new workers in the company 401(k) plan from under fifty percent (50%) to ninety eight percent (98%) by implementing an automatic enrollment policy.
Moreover, while automatic enrollment appears to substantially increase the overall 401(k)-participation rate, automatic enrollment also has another important effect of equalizing participation rates across various demographic subgroups. The effects are largest among the groups with the lowest participation rates under the previous regime of affirmative elections, particularly blacks and Hispanics, the young, and employees with lower levels of compensation.
As the United State's personal savings rate—savings as a percentage of disposable income—fell to a quarterly low of about three tenths of one percent (0.3%) in the first quarter 2000, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued two rulings (Revenue Rulings 2000-8 & 2000-33) in 2000 approving automatic enrollment for employees already on payrolls and for participants in 403(b) retirement plans for nonprofit and educational workers and for 457 plans for government workers.
Noting that 75 million Americans do not participate in a retirement pension plan and have little or no other retirement savings, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Labor Secretary Alexis Herman issued a joint statement praising automatic enrollment as a “promising method of encouraging participation by those who disproportionately have been missing the benefits of a regular, disciplined approach to retirement savings. We encourage employers to consider adopting automatic enrollment.”
Beyond a genuine desire to help employees save for retirement, companies have pragmatic reasons to offer automatic enrollment to their 401(k) Benefit Plans. Utilizing automatic enrollment has proven to be an effective means for increasing the contribution level for non-highly compensated employees so that these companies' 401(k) Benefit Plans meet discrimination tests and, thereby, allow highly compensated employees to maximize their contributions to the companies' 401(k) Benefit Plans.
However, as is usually the case, there is always a down side. In the situation described above, the “lose” aspect of automatic enrollment being that automatic enrollment has apparently generated a tremendous amount of employee Benefit Plan participant inertia. The same inertia that kept and continues to keep eligible employees from initially signing up as 401(k) Benefit Plan participants, also keeps employees from taking maximum advantage of the 401(k) Benefit Plan after the employees are automatically enrolled in the 401(k) Benefit Plan. A substantial percentage of 401(k) Benefit Plan participants hired under an automatic enrollment policy exhibit “default behavior”—sticking to both the default contribution level and the default investment allocation, both of which is usually less than optimal with respect to future impact on the individuals or national budgetary policy.
For example, a study conducted by Hewitt Associates and released in July 2000 (See, for example, Hewitt Associates (in conjunction with Harvard University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), “Enrolling Employees in 401(k) Plan Not A Cure All”) looked at the participation and default behavior of more than 53,000 eligible employees hired before and after automatic enrollment was initiated at two U.S. companies (Companies A and B) over a one to two-year period. Both companies automatically enrolled employees in conservative stable value funds at a two percent (2%) to a three percent (3%) percent contribution rate. As reported in the study, more than half of the eligible employees remained at the companies' conservative default elections for both contribution level and investment allocation.
Further, after the automatic enrollment program was implemented, an average of sixty three percent (63%) of eligible employees hired under automatic enrollment at Company A contributed at the default rate; fifty seven percent (57%) percent invested in the default fund and fifty one percent (51%) remained at both default elections. At Company B, an average of sixty two percent (62%) of eligible employees participating under automatic enrollment contributed at the default rate; sixty seven percent (67%) invested in the default fund and fifty eight percent (58%) remained at both default elections.
Similarly, the Madrian and Shea (2000) study (See, for example, Madrian, Brigitte C.; Shea, Dennis F. “The Power of Suggestion: Inertia in 401(k) Participation and Savings Behavior,” NBER Working Paper No. W7682, May 2000) found that an average of seventy five percent (75%) of Benefit Plan participants hired under automatic enrollment contributed at the default rate of three percent (3%); eighty percent (80%) invested in the default money market fund and about sixty one percent (61%) did nothing to change their savings/investment behavior from the default specified by the plan sponsor or company if no other action was taken.
The good news for the automatic enrollment policy is that 401(k) Benefit Plan participation is much higher under the Benefit Plan automatic enrollment policy than when an affirmative election by an individual plan participant is required in order for an eligible individual employee to actively participate in the Benefit Plan. It is believed that the best explanation for the low participation rate of new hires, in the absence of an automatic enrollment policy, is that the decision to participate in the Benefit Plan is complicated, which leads individual employees to defer making a decision and to procrastinate with respect to making a definite decision. Utilization of an automatic enrollment policy apparently decreases the perceived complexity of the 401(k) Benefit Plan participation decision by decoupling the participation decision from the savings and investment decision.
The bad news, however, is that roughly sixty percent (60%) of the employees that have been automatically enrolled subsequently did nothing to increase their fairly low three percent (3%) contribution rate or to reallocate their contributions away from the default investment option to a more individually appropriate investment or to recognize the importance of appropriately individual funding for future liabilities, and then determine an appropriate individual funding policy and asset allocation model to best fund individually perceived future liabilities, and only then select investment vehicles based on the ability to implement the individual model allocation—thus recognizing that money management (i.e., security selection) is of secondary importance for passive, long-term investors. Again, complexity-induced procrastination appears to best explain why roughly sixty percent (60%) of automatic enrollees—the financially uninvolved—fail to change the initial default investment choices to more individually appropriate investment(s).
The “financially uninvolved,” it is believed, have a much greater tendency to stick with the status quo investment(s) (when one is available) as financial decisions become more difficult. Additionally, it is highly likely that the “financially uninvolved” view the default contribution rate and investment allocation under automatic enrollment as including an implicit approval by their employer, who sponsors the Benefit Plan, of such investment decision as being the appropriate investment decision for them, the specific employee. In this respect the “financially uninvolved” may be correct in that, absent an affirmative election, one or more plan fiduciaries (typically including in this type of activity, the plan sponsor acting as a fiduciary) is responsible under the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974 or “ERISA” (which is the law that is generally applicable to private sector retirement plans) for the default investment allocation.
The results from an automatic Benefit Plant enrollment policy also have implications for the design of public policies to encourage savings that have long term budget and budget deficit impact. The above described results of the present automatic Benefit Plan enrollment policy implementation strongly suggest that, if Social Security reform were to include the adoption of partially self-directed individual accounts, as proposed by the Bush Administration, a substantial percentage of individuals would end up with the default plan investments as specified by the Federal Government. In both cases, getting the default investment allocation “right” will have a tremendous impact on the distribution of retirement savings available to individual Benefit Plan participants. If the default investment allocation is not optimized, citizens, in general, and Benefit Plan participants in particular, will most likely have less retirement income, pay less tax and, as a result, create additional financial demands and stress on the government because, as a result of less optimum investment allocation during the life of a Benefit Plan participant, the government will collect less revenue and, thus, have less income. At the same time government will most likely be experiencing increased demand for services from persons with inadequate retirement income. In this regard, existing evidence indicates that the negative effect caused by the increased demand for services from persons with inadequate retirement income would tend to be concentrated among persons who are the least advantaged members of United States society, and, as a result, the social strains resulting from such members, who have not fared well in optimizing their investment allocation, could be expected to increase. (See, for example, “Investment Without Education, The Disparate Impact of Women And Minorities in Self-Directed Defined Contribution Plans,” by Jane Elizabeth Zaglein published in 2001 in the Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal at 5 Empl. Rats. & Employ. Pol'y J. 223.)
Thus, in order to convert the present automatic Benefit Plan enrollment policy from an apparent “win-lose” proposition to a “win-win” proposition, a viable way must be developed to move “financially uninvolved” employees out of the default investment option(s) and into investment option(s) having individual appropriate contribution rates and investment allocations without compromising the Benefit Plan sponsors' need for freedom from any significant possibility of litigation by reason of providing asset allocation and savings assistance to Benefit Plan employees, which has been a considerable obstacle in the past.
Another problem that has surfaced is that Benefit Plan sponsors are increasingly concerned that by the Benefit Plan sponsors increasing the initial contribution rate, employees may be induced to opt-out of 401(k) Benefit Plan participation, and just as there has been and is participation inertia, there will be non-participant inertia as well.
The above-mentioned studies show that a majority of eligible employees who fail to act on deciding whether and how much to participate in a Benefit Plan will also be likely not to decide on how to optimally invest their contributions in an individually appropriate investment vehicle to achieve an individually appropriate investment allocation. Under the facts outlined by IRS revenue Ruling 98-30, if a Benefit Plan participant has made a no-investment election, then the Benefit Plan can invest the contributions in a balanced fund that includes both diversified equity and fixed income investment vehicles.
Many Benefit Plan sponsors are wary of choosing default fund allocations that includes equities because they are concerned that the Benefit Plan sponsors will be blamed if the investment returns fall or are negative during adverse market periods. Consequently, most automatic Benefit Plan enrollments use conservative investments (e.g., money market find or stable value find) as the Benefit Plan default allocation.
Additionally, IRS included a warning in IRS revenue Ruling 98-30 ruling that the Department of Labor will not consider the Benefit Plan participant or beneficiary to have exercised the type of control over Benefit Plan investment choices that is necessary to justify relaxing fiduciary responsibilities in the ERISA section 404(c) Benefit Plan regulations. In this case, the fact that the Benefit Plan participant or beneficiary is merely told of the Benefit Plan investments that will, in the absence of instructions to the contrary, be made on his or her behalf cannot be considered control of the Benefit Plan investment decision by the Benefit Plan participant. Therefore, other Benefit Plan fiduciaries will not be relieved of responsibility for the results of the Benefit Plan investment by reason of ERISA section 404(c).
Finally, as noted above, many employees consider the Benefit Plan default investment as affirmative Benefit Plan investment advice received from the company or Benefit Plan sponsor. A person who provides Benefit Plan investment advice with respect to retirement assets under ERISA is acting in a fiduciary capacity, and such advice must comply with ERISA's general prudence requirements. Specifically, ERISA §404(a)(1)(B) states that “the fiduciary should act with the care, skill, prudence, and diligence under the circumstances then prevailing that a prudent man acting in a like capacity and familiar with such matters would use in the conduct of an enterprise of like character and with like aims.” Thus, it appears highly questionable that a prudent expert would ever use a “one size fits all” investment selection approach for all individual Benefit Plan participants (such as investing in a money-market fund), given the clear known existence of the enormous individual differences in funding requirements, time horizon, risk tolerance, etc., and other factors related to making an optimum asset allocation and investment decision, including Benefit Plan asset allocation.
Moreover, prudent procedures generally require that an appropriate allocation of Benefit Plan investment asset classes be used that will yield the highest probability of meeting a particular Benefit Plan participant's long-term investment objectives without exceeding tolerances for short-term investment market volatility. Again, it is highly questionable that a prudent expert would recommend a conservative Benefit Plan investment allocation such as a money market fund for younger Benefit Plan participants, which when combined with a low Benefit Plan default contribution rate, will likely ultimately result in the realization of an inadequate amount of savings in order to fund future retirement income needs at an appropriate level without placing undue financial burdens on various government organizations and adversely impacting national budgetary considerations.
The Benefit Plan default investment allocation is important because a number of studies have concluded that Benefit Plan asset allocation decisions have the greatest impact on the overall long-term performance of a Benefit Plan investment portfolio. A recent study found that, for passive, long-term investors, asset allocation determines about one hundred percent (100%) of performance-regardless of whether one is measuring return variability across time, return variation between funds, or return amount. For the short-term investor, who trades more frequently, invests in individual securities, and practices market timing, asset allocation has less of an impact on returns. Thus, the impact of asset allocation on performance is directly correlated with investment behavior. (See for example, Roger G. Ibbotson and Paul D. Kaplan, “Does Asset Allocation Policy Explain 40%, 90%, or 100% of Performance?” Financial Analysts Journal, January/February 2000.)
It is believed that this study has particular significance for workers using 401(k)-type plans to save for retirement. A study of year-end 1998 data by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Investment Company Institute (ICI) found that approximately seventy-five percent (75%) of 401(k) participants had not changed their equity allocations in the previous two years. Thus, a substantial percentage of 401(k) participants exhibit long-term, passive investment behavior when managing their self-directed retirement assets. For the great majority of 401(k) participants (i.e., the “financially uninvolved”), asset allocation (rather than security selection or market timing) is the dominant determinant of performance on their individual plan accounts.
The problem with specifying a one-size-fits-all Benefit Plan default allocations is that, for individuals, appropriate Benefit Plan contribution levels and asset allocation determinations are based on the employee's unique needs and circumstances, which change over time as employees get closer to retirement and individual employee wealth increases. The Benefit Plan goal should be to devise appropriate long-term investment strategies that will assist employees with meeting both their short, intermediate, and long term investment objectives with the least amount of unacceptable or inappropriate risk for their particular circumstances at a particular time. The risk an individual employee can afford not only depends on his/her attitude towards risk, but his/her total financial situation. The earning ability outside the employee's investments in the Benefit Plan is also important in determining the individual employee's capacity for risk. Employees with high earning abilities are able to take more investment risk, because they can, more easily recoup from poor performing investment and resulting financial losses than those employees with lower earning abilities can.
The first step in arriving at appropriate Benefit Plan default investment strategy is to coordinate a savings plan with an optimal portfolio that facilitates the Benefit Plan participant to appropriately find future retirement income needs. The criterion used for selecting the initial Benefit Plan investment allocation is based on cash flow needs and “Human Capital”; “Human Capital” being defined as the actuarial present value of future retirement savings, Benefit Plan pension income, and Social Security income. Thus, the variables important to the calculation of Human Capital include retirement savings (401(k), IRA, etc.), current and retirement age, mortality and life expectancy, gender, real long term interest rates, Benefit Plan pension income and Social Security income. Human Capital is usually the dominant asset for young and middle-aged employees as Benefit Plan financial assets would be a tiny fraction of their total wealth.
Thus, in accordance with the above, it is quite reasonable for younger employees to hold an all-stock investment Benefit Plan allocation, because of their ability to offset short-term losses through adjusting future Benefit Plan investment strategy, consumption and savings. As employees become older, the proportion of Human Capital in total wealth becomes smaller; therefore, over time the Benefit Plan investment allocation needs to be gradually adjusted to become less aggressive.
As previously discussed, it makes little sense to use automatic Benefit Plan procedures to enroll younger employees and increase their Benefit Plan contribution level over time, and then use the Benefit Plan's money market fund, or similar vehicle as the default Benefit Plan investment choice to invest their Benefit Plan contributions. Similarly, it may be imprudent to use the Benefit Plan's balanced fund or similar vehicle as the default Benefit Plan choice for older employees, who may lack the ability to make up losses that may occur during adverse market conditions.
Another problem that has long been acknowledged relating to optimizing investment portfolios for Benefit Plan participants is that the entities and/or persons most capable of delivering an optimum investment solution typically have financial interests that may be or are inconsistent with that of the individuals who need investment allocation services. For example, in the case of entities that administer Benefit Plans, they are typically the same entities that traditionally manage the investments of the investment vehicles normally offered in connection with Benefit Plans. Such investment managers receive most (if not all) of their compensation as a percentage of assets managed, with such percentages varying according to the nature of the risk associated with the particular investment vehicles. For example, an international equity find would typically pay a manager a higher percentage resulting in a higher net profit than a domestic bond fund manager for finds having approximately the same assets under management. In the case of financial intermediaries (such as licensed securities brokers), they typically receive differing levels of initial and subsequent commissions depending on the investment they choose or advise a person to choose.
Similar or identical conflicts of interest also occur when determining how to invest at a time when persons are no longer working. For example, investors must choose at that time whether to purchase a stream of income (e.g., an annuity) in order to hedge against the risk of outliving the money that has been put aside for retirement. Persons who typically provide assistance with these decisions receive commissions when they sell annuities and therefore have or may have interests that could affect the quality of the assistance that they provide. Persons who manage investments for a person, and are compensated based on a percentage of the amount they manage, would have an incentive to recommend or otherwise cause a person to withdraw amounts as slowly as possible in order to maximize the income of the investment manager at the expense of the investors best interest.
These situations could lead to persons with inconsistent interests intentionally or unintentionally acting to cause amounts to be saved or invested so that these persons with inconsistent interests enjoy a higher income, a situation possibly not in the best interest of the individual Benefit Plan participant whose funds are being invested by the persons providing traditional services for the Benefit Plan.
Thus, there is a clear need for a new and innovative investment program that eliminates or at least significantly ameliorates this economic conflict of interest by, for example, providing for a separation between the entities or entity that determines how much to save and how the savings should be invested from other compensated functions such as the investment management. Such an investment program should provide compensation for the critical functions of determining how much an individual should save and how the savings should be invested in a manner that reduces or eliminates conflicts of interest including those that result from receiving compensation from other sources including compensation from investment management.
Such a new and innovative investment program should be implemented by separating or not separating the Benefit Plan allocation and savings function from the Benefit Plan money management function in such a way that conflicts are, if not eliminated, at least ameliorated. As is known, the substantial effect of conflicts on financial institutions has been documented in the Study (Conflicts of Interest and the Credibility of Underwriter Analyst Recommendations by Michaely and Wolmack published in 1999) that was cited before Congress in the hearings in Congress held on Jun. 14, 2001, by the Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises on “Analyzing the Analysts: Are Investors Getting Unbiased Information from Wall Street”. By providing that the two functions may be separated so as to ameliorate or eliminate such conflicts, implementing such a new and innovative investment program would increase the likely and perceived quality of the Benefit Plan allocation services with a corresponding positive effect on the marketplace and individual Benefit Plan participant confidence, thus making optimum Benefit Plan savings more likely.
The above separation should also eliminate the need for artificial and less precise mechanisms to address issues such as fee leveling (charging the same fees for each investment vehicle), as these other methods do not precisely address the fundamental conflicts, which are variable profits, since the same fee may result in higher profits. The above separation should also eliminate offsets, or offsetting the cost of investment vehicles with higher fees by rebating a portion of the fees, directly or indirectly to a Benefit Plan, which also may cause certain functions to be more profitable and others to be underpaid because, like fee leveling, offsets only addresses the gross amount (and not the profits) of the fee paid.
Thus, there is a clear need for a new and innovative investment program that separates the Benefit Plan allocation and money management function, which would be a significant improvement over the aforementioned offset mechanisms, as the Benefit Plan allocation and money management function separation also addresses conflicts that can occur during both the Benefit Plan accumulation and disbursement modes for investing when the subject services (e.g., Benefit Plan asset allocation, Benefit Plan formulation/implementation of saving plans, and Benefit Plan formulation/implementation of distribution plans) are controlled by the same person.
In this connection, there is also a need to insure that the above services, which have traditionally been paid for indirectly, e.g., from commissions paid for executing Benefit Plan stock trades or fees from Benefit Plan money management, are ameliorated, as this traditional payment may have contributed to the unacceptable current state of affairs, which finds that many persons will not obtain the benefit of the subject Benefit Plan services if they have to pay a separately stated fee for them, even though the subject Benefit Plan services clearly provide more value than other Benefit Plan services for which participants pay more (e.g., Benefit Plan asset management). Typically, when other services subsidize the subject Benefit Plan services, there is a temptation for Benefit Plan service providers to maximize their profits, often in a manner that is to the detriment of an individual Benefit Plan participant (e.g., churning or excessive trading), making it desirable to separate these Benefit Plan services from other Benefit Plan functions so that the fees for the Benefit Plan subject services can remain non-obvious, but that other Benefit Plan functions that subsidize these Benefit Plan services will not be utilized in a manner that disrupts the subject Benefit Plan services. This is believed to be significant because the subject Benefit Plan services will determine the great majority of an investor's investment returns.
In this regard, the new and innovative investment program should address the conflict of interest that could occur in connection with the following: the system commits investors, with a minimum of indicative data, to as automatically as is possible or practical, allocate a portion of the investors' future salary increases towards retirement savings, based on formulae originated and/or approved by a person or persons, possibly including a determination of what constitutes a minimum of indicative data, who are independent of persons who receive other compensation such as fees for Benefit Plan money management. Ideally, the new and innovative investment program should result in automatic Benefit Plan deductions from which Benefit Plan participants have to affirmatively elect to opt out of, if they wish to discontinue Benefit Plan participation and/or change their contribution to the Benefit Plan.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should automatically as is possible or practical allocate Benefit Plan investment assets to an optimal combination of asset classes on a regular basis, based on the unique facts and circumstances of each individual investor, either based on an election by the person whose assets are invested or by a third party who is independent of persons who earn variable fees and profits by reason of the allocation of the assets or the savings levels established, in order to systemically address and ameliorate any potential conflict of interest. The Benefit Plan allocation should result either from a single or multiple affirmative directions or in the case where a third party can act on behalf of the individual, with no direction from the individual.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should choose or assists persons in choosing an appropriate manner in which to receive Benefit Plan income during a time when they are no longer saving but instead consuming prior savings (e.g., at retirement).
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should provide for oversight of the conditions designed to eliminate or ameliorate conflicts of interest within the Benefit Plan.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should provide a guarantee, whereby professional Benefit Plan allocation is precisely implemented according to the criteria specified by the Independent Expert and is guaranteed to those investors who participate in the investment program.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should in addition to using automatic Benefit Plan savings based on the unique characteristics of the individual Benefit Plan participant (which savings amounts are formulated or approved by the Independent Expert), including automatic enrollment in pension plans, to provide appropriate savings, resulting in most cases a substantial boost in savings, and in the case of pension plans to increase Benefit Plan participation rates and then automatically tailor each investor's Benefit Plan investment plan to each investors unique circumstances, making appropriate changes on a regular basis, without obtaining an affirmative election from the Benefit Plan participant each time a change is made, while, in the case of pension plans, help address the needs of the employer who sponsors the Benefit Plan for participant investment safety.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should address the above indicated needs by utilizing safeguards that address the Benefit Plan conflicts of interest, thereby reducing the Benefit Plan sponsors' responsibility and exposure in selecting and monitoring the Benefit Plan investment program.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should address the problems resulting from the fact that currently, individual Benefit Plan participants are either: 1) too involved in the process of selecting Benefit Plan investments and frequently do so by choosing Benefit Plan investments based on the recent performance of individual Benefit Plan investment vehicles; 2) do not save appropriate amounts to meet their goals, including retirement; or 3) more often, feel that they do not have the time, interest, and/or expertise to make appropriate Benefit Plan investments or structure appropriate Benefit Plan savings plans.
The systems and methods of the investment program should solve the above problems by minimizing the input required by individuals and automating the Benefit Plan process to the greatest possible extent while eliminating or ameliorating the conflict of interest that normally exists between parties that provide these Benefit Plan services.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should enable a person who operates the Benefit Plan investment program to offer a meaningful guarantee (e.g., no fees are owed if the investment program is not 100% effective) regarding its effectiveness. The guarantee can be that the allocations for investors will precisely match the criteria of the Independent Expert. No person who currently offers “investment advice” or “education” and is solvent has or could reasonably offer a meaningful guarantee.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should offer such a guarantee because they are granted discretionary investment management authority from the individual plan participant or a third party on behalf of an investor, and thus exercise control of the allocations on a regular basis. “Investment advisors” will not make such a guarantee because they are granted non-discretionary investment management authority, and thus do not exercise control of the allocations on a regular basis.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should result in limiting legal exposure by providing an automatic allocation based on the individual characteristics of participants and a formula established by an Independent Expert.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should provide a data processing system that reduces their input and enables individuals, including 401(k) participants, or persons acting on their own or their behalf, to turn over some or all of these decisions to others, including the ability to automatically enroll and commit employees in advance to allocate a portion of their future salary increases towards retirement savings, which participants have to opt out of if they wish to discontinue. The net result should be that individuals are more likely to achieve their goals mostly because it utilizes the natural tendency of most individuals to minimize their involvement (many take no action whatsoever) in formulating and implementing savings and investment plans.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should minimize individual involvement as such has a corollary benefit in that when individuals are too involved individuals tend to engage in excessive trading of their individual accounts. Research demonstrates that active trading, on the average, materially diminishes investment returns. If individuals are less involved, individuals are less likely to trade and are therefore more likely to enjoy greater investment returns.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should recognize a savings method, like automatic enrollment, that is grounded in findings about the psychology of decision-making. First, most workers realize they need to save more, but lack discipline. Second, restrictions on consumption are much easier to accept if they do not affect current consumption (i.e., they take effect in the future). For example, we all plan our exercise and dieting regimes to start next week or month. Third, people are very sensitive to perceived losses in their welfare. While we can imagine foregoing some gain, bearing a loss is much more difficult. And fourth, people tend to code gains and losses in nominal rather than real dollars, so, for example, a pay increase that is less than the rate of inflation may still be considered a gain rather than a loss.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should use the principles that current plan participants with low contribution rates (i.e., less than 3 percent) and new/existing employees who are not yet participating in the plan are automatically enrolled in a plan that asks for a modest commitment now that gradually increases their contribution level over a period of a few years. The amount should generally be a fixed percentage (e.g., 2-3%) or a proportion of the pay increase (e.g., ⅓ or a ½).
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should, by timing the increase to coincide with the pay increase, assure employees that their take home pay does not diminish. In fact, since the contribution to the saving plan is tax deductible, only part of the increased saving is out-of-pocket, and the actual change in the paycheck is likely to be unnoticeable. The increases continue until the worker reaches the appropriate tax sheltered contribution, or until the worker opts out of the plan.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should, once employees are in the plan and automatically use this savings method, recognize the inertia will help keep the employees in the plan, as the vast majority of employees will not notice the difference in take home pay, but in a few short years certainly notice the difference in their individual Benefit Plan account balance. In fact, since the contribution to the savings plan is tax deductible, only part of the increased savings is out-of-pocket, and the actual change in the paycheck is likely to be unnoticeable.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should use a data processing system that collects, monitors and directs information from individuals including pension plan participants, sponsors, record-keepers and money managers, to optimally allocate investment assets, including but not limited to pension assets, for individual investors/plan participants based on their unique facts and circumstances, with a minimum of input from the individual including a single election or without an affirmative election from plan participants. Such allocation should be automatically used to invest individual investment assets, including assets in a 401(k) plan, which will be monitored and automatically adjusted over time by qualified experts, unless the individual elects to opt out of the automatic allocation plan with an affirmative investment election.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should be used in conjunction with the automatic enrollment and contribution methods discussed above. As such, it can be used by plans that use automatic enrollment for new employees, and for current employees who either do not currently participate in the plan or do participate in the plan but have not elected compensation reduction contributions of a minimum amount (e.g., at least 3 percent). In addition to 401(k) plans, the automatic allocation plan will be made available to 403(b) retirement plans, which serve millions of employees of public schools, educational and charitable organizations, and to 457(b) plans, which serve employees of state and local governments.
The systems and methods of the new and innovative investment program should insure that an appropriate allocation is made for each individual participant on a regular basis, the data processing system will include a relational database that will be continually updated with relevant employee indicative data (e.g., age, salary) and employer plan data (participation status, investment options, employer match, account balance, etc.), which is provided from outside sources including the employer and the plan record-keeper. The data is used to feed the financial analytic engine that will automatically allocate an optimal investment portfolio on a regular basis—based on the participant's retirement income replacement needs and human capital value.